Character Creation: Metroville

Can't all be A material.

The Game: Metroville
The Publisher: Tyler Elliott
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I love superheroes, and I love supers RPGs, but there are a lot of them and some of them are pretty bottom-of-the-barrel. I don't mean to say that Metroville is a bad game - "good" and "bad" aren't useful descriptors and besides, RPGs live or die by their at-the-table experience, for me. I just mean that Metroville utterly fails, at any level, to make me want to run or indeed finish reading it.

Some of this is the artwork. Appreciation for art is subjective, of course, but the interior art for the book looks like something an 8th grade art student could have drawn. It's all black and white, which is fine but this is a supers game, which means that the lack of color stands out. 

But even beyond that, there's a surprising lack of...care, I guess? to the game. There's an example of play (yay!), it's got accompanying illustration (also yay!), but the characters don't have names. Behold:

Like, if you're going to make a game where people use their real names but run around in tights, OK, but there's no setting per se and it just feels very slapdash. Like, "you know how this works, it's an RPG, get to it!" And that approach, putting pressure on the table to already know the basics, can work if you're bringing something interesting to the game, but there are so many supers RPGs that not only explain themselves better but have better production values and better systems, and more support, so what are we doing here?

Also, and this is just a nitpick, I guess: The example of character creation (yay!) wavers back and forth between past and present tense. Very weird.

So let's make a character, how about. We start with character themes, which is just another way to say "concept." 

Oh, this is cute. The section on the fillable sheet (yay!) that says "hero name" isn't fillable (boo). 

Well, anyway, I kind of feel like making an angsty character, but leaning into the "woe is me" teen angst. Actually I think I might lean more towards early 20s, because that's another great source of unbridled, stupid passion, plus you can drink. My character's name is Winter Worthy (his parents were apparently big AJR fans), and he emphatically does not like his name; he goes by Dub (short for Double-U, he refuses to be called "Dubya," and yes his middle starts with W as well. When he's drunk he's fond of saying "I'm a web page lol!"). 

Anyway, I see Dub as getting super powers in a freak accident, and I want his superhero name to be Sleet, so maybe something rain/cold/gray related? Let's move on to the next step. Next step is Origin, which I've already decided will be "Experiment or Accident." 

Next we do Attributes. We have Body, Agility, Mind, Willpower, and Charisma, or BAMWC for short (named after the famed comic artist and spelunker Arthur Bamwc, obviously). I start with 2 in each, and then five more points I can use to bump 'em. 

Well, not to be too predictable, but I picture Sleet as more agile than strong, so I'll raise Agility twice, Mind once, Willpower once. I get a Maximum Stamina of 7, too (I guess I could have raised that, but eh). 

Powers! And...look at this.

 Gobbledy-gook. What do you mean, you get a major power and then...another major power? Why wouldn't you take two major powers? What's this "-5 traits but it really means +5 traits" shit? I can kinda see what they're saying, I think, but it's so weirdly phrased.

OK, so, there are only five "minor" powers, and they're meant to be things that don't change or improve, but they're totally just powers that are arbitrarily put there. One of them is invisibility, for crying out loud, which I think I want. 

But I know I get one Major Super Power, so let's pick that. It can be Mental or Physical, although "shapeshift into an animal" is mental, which is pretty mental. I'll take Control Weather. There are lines on the sheet but I don't know what I'd put under there. Anyway, I'll take Invisibility as my other choice.

Next are a couple more traits, and the book says that Origin determines them, but that's not at all true. Armor (misspelled as "armour," which I think is French for "love," guys) is 0 by default, and Awareness is dependent on Mind and any mental/danger sense based Talents, so I'll come back to that after...

Talents! I get 3 points in General Talents and 2 in Unique Talents, which means I need to think about Sleet's backstory a little. I think Dub comes from a very comfortable suburban family, and secretly feels really bad that he can just be happier, but he feels really angry and miserable all the time. One night, leaving a bar with some of his friends, he slipped and fell down an embankment and wound up in a ditch covered in (he thought) freezing water. His buddies were about to go after him, but then some governmental types showed up and shooed them away, and looked for Dub, but just couldn't see him. Dub learned over the next few weeks that he could control localized weather patterns, and especially excels at lowering the temperature and calling rain. He's working up to snow.

OK, sure. So for General Talents, I'm thinking Swimming, Driving a Car, and Human Nature, all at +1. For Unique Talents, I'll take Dramatic Poetry and Guitar Playing, also +1. 

Traits! OMG, this is just...look, it's an ad/disad system. You want it to balance out. Most times you don't start with any points, some Origins (including mine) start with a few. So basically I start with 5 free points in traits, meaning I can buy 5 points' worth without taking negative traits. Fucking GURPS did this in 1986, for chrissakes. 

So why is this:

...a thing that exists?

Anyway. Good lord, most of these are super powers. Well, fuck it. I'll take Earth Sense, which lets me sense things through the earth (a-doy), I'll take Athletic, and I'll take Cool, Calm, Collected (although in Sleet's case it's more like "disaffected" or "dissociated"). 

Awesome, nothing left but the details. Well, Dub is of average height and build, and he knows he's not going to be punching anyone out anytime soon, but he's quite capable of turning invisible and knocking bad guys off their pins with gusts of wind or making them step in puddles and slip (surprisingly effective!). Sleet wears a white-and-grey outfit with a full face mask, as he finds it easier to make that invisible. 

That's it. Ah, well, they can't all be Wildsea.